Is School Necessary?

Do we have to go to school?  Most people say that you should.  However, school in many ways seems unnecessary.  To be honest, you don’t even need a high school diploma to work in some places.  Now I'm not telling you to drop out nor am I advocating dropping out.  I am just stating that you could be just as or even more successful than another who has finished.  This is thanks to things like on the job training and jobs that don’t need an education. 

Everyone out there knows about Floyd Mayweather Jr. right?  He is a very prominent boxer who makes millions of dollars from his fights.  Well he dropped out of school.  He even has trouble reading books.  Because of his illiteracy, he is the punch line of many jokes.  Once in response he said, “Reading will not define my place in boxing history.”  This is very true.  Sure being able to read would be nice but as a boxer it’s not really needed.  In any fighting career there isn’t really a need for an education.  As a fighter you go into the ring of your profession and fight.  This is how you make money.  This logic also goes for pretty much any athlete.  The only downside to this is if your career is ended early.  Most fighters and other athletes get an education so that if they get a career ending injury they can still make money somehow.

People also really don’t need much of an education now because of something called on the job training.  This makes it where if you don’t have an education the job will train you in what you need to know so you can do your job.  Because of this, you as a potential employee can walk in without knowing anything about the trade or having a proper education.  This makes it easier for people who dropped out to get jobs fast and with little expense to them.  On the other hand, many companies don’t do this if they have more candidates who already know what to do.  It is cheaper for the company most of the time to hire someone who went to college and knows the trade rather than training a new person.  This gives an advantage, in many cases, to people who have a higher education.

In no way do I believe school is not necessary.  However, it can seem like a big waste of time.  Things like on the job training and getting a job that doesn’t need an education make it easy to drop out and still make a living.  On the other hand, college and high school have many benefits that you would miss out on by dropping out. I can’t tell you what to do though.  You should find what would work best for you and chase your dreams.   
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God the Cosmic Designer

Everyone grabbed their gear. We were ready to fight. This was the battle to end all wars. This was our final dramatic push towards Jerusalem. This was the end. I looked up to the cliff above the valley where we were standing. He looked down on us then gave a shout.

We all stood at attention. “This is it,” shouted our leader. “We fight not for ourselves, but for our God.” We began our march.

“Stain the ground with the blood of our enemies.”

We met the enemy. The bullets began flying. He continued shouting, “ Fight! Fight! Fight! Bring God down from heaven with the gun's melody.”

Half of our men were dead. I had no clue how many men had died on the other side. I just knew I could see a small stream of blood flowing through the valley. I was hiding behind a pile of dead men. The bodies provided some coverage. Their sacrifices provided me with cover. I knew one of the men I was hiding behind. They were on my side of the battlefield. All good men. All dead men. All of them had been reduced to mere bullet shields.

I laid on the bare ground. A very ignoble act, but I did it so that I could aim better. I made music. BANG! BANG! BANG! Three round burst. An enemy drops. Another sacrifice to the bloody stream. I looked at it.

The blood from the fallen soldiers added itself to the stream of blood.

My gun added its notes to the song of war.

I looked up to the cliff. Our leader was still there. “Let the song of our–”

A bullet shot straight through his head. He fell down into the ever growing stream of blood. Another sacrifice. I could still hear the sound of his voice in my head. Let the beautiful sound of war bring gawd down from his throne. Let him drink from the river of blood. Let him take his earthly throne at Jerusalem.

A bullet tore through my shoulder. A second bullet went through my leg. Blood poured from my wounds. I was bleeding out. Blood from my wounds fed the raging river. I was the sacrifice now.

I tried to climb to my feet. I was greeted by a barrage of bullets. They tore through my chest, arms, and legs. I crumbled to the ground. My body rolled towards the raging river of blood. I gave a weak cough. This was the end.

This was not what I wanted. I needed to be there when God took his throne from the infidels. I had to see the face of God when our gunshots, our pain, our blood made him look at us. I wanted to see the joy our melody brought him.

I lifted up my eyes and saw him. I wish I hadn't. God was ... I cannot describe God to you. God just was God. Angels circled around him. There he was. I knew he had come down to commend me for my effort. Our effort, our cursing, our song of war had got his attention. This was what I was waited for.

God looked over the battlefield with calm, collect eyes. I wait for him to give me my salvation. Show me it was worth it.

He spoke, “This looks like a nice place for a mountain.”

God the cosmic architect.

He walked away using his hands to show the angels exactly what the new mountain would look like. His feet trampled on the few remaining combatants. Blood sprayed everywhere. God paid it no mind. He just kept walking. We were like microorganisms to him. I do not think he noticed we were here.

He had not heard our pain.

He did not want our blood.

He did not endorse our war.

He just wanted to build his mountain.

God the cosmic architect.
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Open Letter to Death

Dear Death,
You have been there since the day i was born.  You just linger in the background watching me.  Quiet and patient, you  follow me day in and out.  It feels like your getting closer and closer every day that passes. It's almost like you're a predator and I am your prey.  You stalk and hunt me waiting for the right moment.  When that moment comes you'll pounce and take me away forever.  I wish you would just go away.  I wish you would leave me alone.  You never listen though.  You just sit and stare at your prey.  I tried to ignore you.  That didn't work though.  I would wake up every morning to see you staring at me.  I would see you whenever i got into my car and went to work.  I would even see you every single time i took a flight.  I tried so hard to forget you were there but you would just keep getting closer and closer.  After awhile I could even smell your pungent odor as I felt your breath down my neck.  Then I realized that there just isn't a way to get rid of you.  At first I thought i was the only one who experienced this.  I believed i was the only one having to endure this eternal fear of you.  Then I found out i wasn't.  Every living person fears you.  Since the beginning of time we feared you.  I wondered how they got through it each day.  The answer was to accept it.  To accept the thing called death that hunts us all.  To accept the same death that stalks every single one of us.  We can only wait as it gets closer and closer.  We can only be ready for when it comes to take us away.  I'm not afraid anymore.  Are you?

Decoding Fear: Death

Welcome back to what I your resident imaginary philosopher like to call decoding fear.  If this is your first time reading then this is where I ask questions about why we fear things and give you an answer.  Anyway today's fear is something we all know to well.  Death.

Why are we so frightened of this inescapable thing called death?  A better question rather is what is death exactly?  Where do we even go after we finally drop dead of natural causes or other means of dying?  I believe that we fear death because it is yet another one of those things that we do not understand.  For centuries people have been dropping dead yet we never did know why.  We didn't even know what happened after death other than a few accounts by people who died and came back.  People all over the world ask these questions and some discover answers through religion.  According to the Christians after you die you go to something like a grand courtroom. When your there you get judged for your sins by god.  Then you get sent to either a wonderful place called heaven or one with fire and brimstone called hell.  Yet, to the Buddhists after you die you will keep getting reincarnated.  This happens until you can finally break the eternal cycle and go to nirvana.  Then there are a few people who see death as being only nothingness where you sit for eternity. The only thing you can do is think about all that you have done in your life.  The true question is how will we ever figure out which of the many afterlives is the real thing without dying.

Unfortunately there is no way to figure out what happens in the afterlife until we die.  There is just no way to know what happens after death and that's why i believe we fear it.  As humans we don't want to die yet. We want assurance that afterwards we'll go to a beautiful paradise or some other type of heaven.  What about people with near death experiences? They saw what happens in the afterlife.  That may be true but how do we know their brain didn't just make up these images of what the viewer wanted to see.  To put it in simple terms the world will never know 

On Being a Writer

Hello today we are going to post this awesome writing.  It comes from Shana Chartier and she is a fellow writer that i met.  Everyone out there can view here blog here after reading this.  If you want your guest post to be featured next time send your ideas and stories to me through twitter.  Enjoy

Shana Chartier is a New Hampshire author with an uncanny ability to not listen to people while they're talking because she's thinking about how to describe them in a story. Her debut novel, Past Lives, is due out later this summer through Pants On Fire Press, and her thoughts are often on display on her blog

A lot of people are asking what it means to be a writer these days. You can Google it and find blogs for miles on the subject, full of opinions saying we should be writing every day and journaling and always thinking about writing all the time and blah blah blah.

To me there is one big difference between a writer and someone who writes, and that is ambition.

This is the 21st century, where nearly everyone has a platform to express themselves with the written word. With the obvious downside of terrible grammar and overt racism being on display, the upside is that communication is happening at all times. People are connecting. People are expressing themselves. The point here is, everyone writes. So you want to be a writer? Here’s how to make the difference:

Writing is a profession, which means you need experience. You need to get published. Getting published is really, really hard for a lot of people. Imagine going on a ton of dates and being rejected at the end of the night every time for five years. But you keep going on dates. That’s what it takes to be a writer. You have to have enough courage to push through an undetermined amount of time and the mountainous pile of No Thanks’ to get to the person who wants to pay you for your artistic expression. Oh also you’re competing against people who are being professionally trained to write, people who have been writing for several decades, and people who are terrible writers that are annoying the editors reading your work before they get to yours.

Sound daunting? It is. This is the path a writer takes. Not everyone takes this road—some people are in the right place at the right time or know just the right person to expedite this process. They’re like people who can eat whatever they want and not get fat—they’re the minority here. The rest of us are in the trenches. Not getting published? You might have to look in the mirror and ask yourself if your work really sucks. And it might. And that’s ok. I wrote three crappy novels before I developed a sense of what was being published and got a book accepted for publication. Just as six pack abs don’t happen overnight, neither does good writing. The greats were not born with a perfect sense of story—it takes time to develop it.

To a millennium dweller, this is terrible news. We love instant gratification. But if you want to be a writer you’ve got to prepare to fight for it. Writing combines business and art, which are two things that should be like water and oil. They don’t go well together, but in order for us to make a living, they must. So to get published do you need to write every day and think about writing every waking moment? No. Sometimes I go months at a time without writing a word. It comes when it comes, and that’s ok. Find your process and let it be fun. My advice is to read voraciously, take note of your favorite authors’ style and look deeper into why they were published—then emulate it with your own story.

Getting published is no easy feat, but it can be done. If you have the soul of a writer, and you know who you are out there, then tie that to your warrior side and prepare to do battle with your own insecurities.

Because if you don’t, you’ll just be someone who writes, just like everyone else.